


Group Tasks

by To_Brookwood



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Eventual Romance, Except for the part where group projects suck, F/M, Fluff, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22812655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/To_Brookwood/pseuds/To_Brookwood
Summary: The last thing Annette needed this semester was a mandatory group task. She was already overwhelmed with school and work, and having to carry an assigned group wasn't going to make anything easier.Especially not if Felix Fraldarius is involved.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 52
Kudos: 99





	1. The Announcement

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fanfiction in five hundred and twenty seven years. Let's see how THIS goes.

"It's all over!" Annette Dominic wailed, collapsing back onto her squeaky mattress and throwing her arm over her eyes to add to the overall dramatic effect. Really, she should have probably fainted or something - in Annette's opinion, her behavior wasn't nearly dramatic enough to fit the horrible situation at hand.

Mercedes von Martritz, best friend, big sister figure, and woman who had just been interrupted in the middle of reading her business econ textbook, sighed heavily and stood up, following Annette into the tiny space that she'd taken over as her bedroom in their 1+ bedroom apartment. The plus was basically a walk-in pantry space without any shelving, just big enough to fit in a twin bed and a little dresser. "Annie, what happened?" 

Annette peeked at Mercedes from beneath her arm. "Group tasks! Do you recall how I said specifically at the beginning of this semester that if there's one thing I want to avoid this semester, it's group tasks?"

Considering the semester had only begun a mere two weeks before, Mercedes didn't have to think very hard at all. And, judging by Annette's current state... "Oh no!"

"Oh yes!" Annette said, pushing herself up onto her elbows. "Professor Seteth decided that it would be just such a great idea for our midterm projects - which he already assigned, by the way - to be done as a group task. A group task!"

"Seteth...is that your humanities requirement?"

"Yes," Annette said grumpily. "It's 20th Century Art. Our group got significant artistic movements from 1910-1920."

"Well," Mercedes said, clearly aiming to present the task in a positive light. "That's right during the war, yes? War is terrible, but often leads to new artistic expression."

"Yes, I know, but Mercie, you don't understand!" Annette whined, flopping herself further up the bed so she could sag against the wall. "I didn't want to do any group tasks this semester because I have so much to do! I have that concert to prepare for at the end, and there's the play, and I've already got four other classes because I wanted to retake my math, and I don't have time for a group task!"

"Well, how many people are in your group?" Mercedes asked. 

Annette glared. "Three other than me. Want to know who they are?"

Ah. Mercedes felt they were coming to the crux of the problem now. "Yes, very much so."

"Well first, we have Linhardt," Annette said. "Which shouldn't be terrible news, but..." Annette trailed off meaningfully.

"...but Linhardt would as soon sleep through an entire class," Mercedes finished, having had the experience of Linhardt as a classmate before. The guy was brilliant, probably almost at genius level, except for the fact that he only cared about the classes in his major, which was not humanities - it was genetics. And even then, he wasn't exactly the most motivated student. "What is he even doing in your class?"

"I don't know," Annette grumped. "Same as me, I guess. Last minute requirement."

"This wouldn't be so last minute if you'd just let yourself admit a B isn't bad," Mercedes chided Annette gently.

"We are NOT talking about that sociology class," Annette pleaded. "That was a horrible class."

Privately, Mercedes agreed. Their professor had been terrible and the projects had been complicated beyond explanation, but while Mercedes - who had also taken the class - was more than happy with her B, Annette was determined to receive As across the board. Hence, retaking the course requirement with this class, and doing so with what seemed to be a class full of people doing it because they'd forgotten up until this point. "Who else?"

"Leonie."

"Oh dear," Mercedes said. Yes, her initial impression seemed correct. It was always better to take care of the non-major classes early, just to avoid the stragglers. Leonie wasn't a bad student per se, but she had absolutely no interest in anything that wasn't sports. She did just well enough to keep her sports scholarship, and that was absolutely it. Leonie often took her classes with Ignatz, a boy who was very sweet but who Mercedes thought probably did a little more of Leonie's work than Leonie herself. No, this was not good. "Who's the final member?" she asked with trepidation. 

Annette sighed, long and so discouraged that Mercedes wanted to wrap her up in a hug on the spot. And when Annette finally released the name, Mercedes did just that.

"Felix Fraldarius," Annette mumbled, her cheeks pinking. 

"Oh. Oh dear," Mercedes said again. "You poor thing."

Annette went willingly into Mercedes' arms, clutching at her and whining quietly under her breath. "Why? Why did it have to be this semester? Why couldn't it be next semester? I'm never going to graduate at this rate."

"Oh Annie," Mercedes said. "Yes you will." And she would. If there was one thing Mercedes knew about her younger, sweet and slightly frantic friend, it was that she would graduate with flying colors if only she would stop doubting herself. "Here. I think we still have a box of brownies somewhere. Should we make them?"

"What about your reading?" Annette asked, sniffling a little as she wiped at one eye, pretending there wasn't a slight wet spot now on the shoulder of Mercedes' shirt.

"It can wait," Mercedes said. "It'll be fine, and so will you." It was true - she knew Annette would be fine in the end. But no, this group task wasn't going to make anything any easier. 

Especially not if Felix Fraldarius was involved. 


	2. Mandatory Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's nothing like discussing a plan with group partners to make the whole thing feel kind of hopeless.

Annette didn't sleep well the two nights leading up to her next Humanities class. Granted, she wasn't the best sleeper to start with, but being aware of how her future was hanging in the balance meant that she spent more time puttering around the tiny apartment with more mugs of tea than usual. Mercedes tried suggesting that perhaps Annette was overreacting, but Annette couldn't help it. She liked things to be perfect, to go as she'd strategically planned, and this wasn't part of the plan. 

By the time she got out of her math class, the one almost directly before the next Humanities lesson, Annette had bitten two of her nails down to the quick. She'd put so much effort into trying to get this semester to slot into place just right. She'd made multiple schedules, testing for the best combination of times, subjects, and professors. As a junior, she knew most of the teachers in Garreg Mach University, and after her trial and error, she'd managed to come up with what she'd thought would be the perfect schedule to help her get through this semester. Up until the very moment classes had started, it _had_ been.

But of course, things couldn't stay that way, could they? The problem was this very Humanities class. Annette had _thought_ she was taking it with Professor Eisner - Byleth - a professor who really knew her stuff and managed to convey that information without piling excruciating amounts of homework on top of her students. Annette loved Byleth, and had taken two other classes with her already. She'd been looking _forward_ to this class, especially considering she'd taken it before with Professor Hanneman and it had been awful. She'd gotten a B, which was entirely because Hanneman's teaching style consisted of rambling off indefinitely and then expecting his students to be able to read his mind on what exactly he wanted for their papers. Obviously, Annette hadn't guessed very well.

So yes, retaking the course with Byleth had been a surefire way to bolster her GPA, and Annette had been excited. But then, on the first day of class, Annette's heart had plummeted to her shoes when she'd stepped into the classroom only to find Professor Seteth (someone who Annette avoided at all costs) standing at the front of the room. Professor Seteth had a "reputation." He reveled in assigning homework, generally ignoring the fact that students had other classes, or jobs, or _lives_ when he piled them high with readings and projects and endless lecture notes that he would check for a grade. Annette had immediately emailed Byleth from her seat, hiding her phone behind her stack of books, desperately trying to figure out what had happened. She received a reply halfway through the class, typically flat but apologetic (and kind of annoyed, but at Seteth, not Annette) explaining that as Byleth was an adjunct, Seteth, a full time professor, had bumped her and taken her course for himself when one of his own courses - religious studies in popular culture - had failed to gain enough enrollment to run. There was nothing Byleth could do, and she wasn't teaching any other equivalents that Annette could jump to.

Annette was stuck.

The clock ticked closer to the hour, and Annette braced herself as she approached the classroom. She pulled her teal wool coat more tightly around herself even though the classrooms in Garreg Mach tended to border on the sweltering, just because her coat was soft and it was nice to be reminded that some good things did happen in the world. With a deep breath, Annette pulled open the door to the Humanities classroom, taking a quick glance around.

"Annette!" Leonie called, waving at her. She'd claimed four desks together in the back of the classroom, and Annette fought back a wince. She liked sitting right up front, directly in front of the professor so that she wouldn't miss anything. This wasn't ideal, but...at least Leonie was actually in class? She tended to skip whenever possible, so Annette decided to take this as a sign. Of...something.

"Hi Leonie," Annette said, picking the desk in front of and to the right of the other orange haired girl. "How are you?"

"Eh," Leonie said, and then immediately began pulling up the leg of her sweatpants. "Skidded out during practice and kind of messed up my knee. How's it look?"

Annette obliged by leaning forward, then immediately wished she hadn't - it looked like Leonie had torn away most of the skin right below her knee. "Leonie! Why isn't that bandaged?"

Leonie shrugged. "It itches," she said, leaning down to scratch at the skin surrounding the injury.

Annette slapped her hand away. "Don't do that, it'll get infected! You should cover it. It shouldn't be exposed like that."

"No, it shouldn't," Linhardt said as he collapsed into the chair beside Annette and in front of Leonie, casting the briefest look down at Leonie's leg before visibly turning almost as green as his hair. "Put that away - I can't stand the sight of blood."

"It's not bleeding," Leonie protested. "Come on."

"Seriously," Annette said. "Get that wrapped."

"What the fuck, Pinelli," came a new voice, low and always with that same edge - of irritation. "Nobody wants to see that."

Annette didn't have to turn to know that Felix Fraldarius was directly behind her. The temperature of the room had dropped by at least three degrees, entirely because of the disdain rolling off the person who slapped his notebook down on the desk that Annette's elbow had previously been resting on, causing her to jerk away.

"Sorry," Felix muttered under his breath, though he didn't bother to look at her as he slid into his seat.

Annette looked away. "It's fine," she said, her voice so high it was almost a squeak. Linhardt gave her a weird look, and she felt her cheeks pink. "I'm, uh, just jumpy."

"You should get over that," Leonie said, finally tugging her pant leg back down. "Sounds like you need to work on your mental self control."

Annette opened her mouth, trying to figure out how to respond to that slight (because _what?_ ), but Felix got there first. "You're the one everyone could hear swearing from outside the fucking building," Felix said, "when you were dumb enough to go sliding across the gym floor on your fucking knee."

"Language," Linhardt said mildly, but Annette risked another glance at Felix out of the corner of her eye. He was looking down at Leonie's leg, which meant it was safe enough to look at him. Out of the whole group, Felix Fraldarius was probably the scariest. She didn't know him, which made sense - he was from one of the richer families that attended their school. Garreg Mach was a small, prestigious university, and an expensive one at that. However, because half of the student body was comprised of legacy families, families that were crazy rich and who were perfectly willing to donate right back into the school that had given them their prestige (and also probably for the tax benefits), students like Annette were able to jump on certain scholarships that made the process more affordable. It still wasn't entirely without cost, which was why Annette worked for the school's theater, but she'd spent all of high school working and earning straight As and doing anything she could think of to come to this school, and she didn't regret any of it. She was a hard worker, and her work ethic had honed to the point that she'd been able to craft that perfect - lost - schedule. Now she was stuck dealing with Linhardt's lacking worth ethic, and Leonie's possibly nonexistent one.

She had no idea what Felix's work ethic was like, though. She'd had only one class with him, and they hadn't sat anywhere near each other. She'd never ever spoken to him before, though she couldn't help but notice him. There was something about Felix. It made her nervous, of course, because they way that "something" manifested in his interactions with others seemed to be in the form of impatience and irritation, but...still. Of all the rich kids, he felt the furthest away. People like Dimitri were stiff and clearly not on the same practical level of the rest of humanity, but he tried to be kind. Sylvain was....weird. There was something off about him, a glint behind his eyes that made his smiles never ring true, and to say his reputation preceded him was an understatement. He was currently in Mercedes' business ethics class, a concept which Annette found very funny. Mercedes, who'd had several classes with Sylvain, was less amused. She'd started speaking kindly of Sylvain much more than she had before, which Annette hoped didn't indicate a larger interest in the womanizing redhead. She didn't trust Sylvain to play nicely with her friend's heart, and while Annette had been compared to a kitten or a puppy more than once (and rarely flatteringly), she would rip that guy's heart out with her teeth if he so much as made Mercie shed a single tear.

But that was neither here nor there. For all that Sylvain and Dimitri were strange, the other usual member of their group, Ingrid, was lovely. She was very serious, which meant that she and Annette had bonded during the classes they'd taken together, becoming occasional study partners over the past two and a half years. Then, there was Dedue, who Annette liked very, very much. He was quiet and kind, and kind of obsessed with botany just like her friend Ashe, which was fun. But Felix? Felix was a mystery. A scary, glowering mystery.

He was also very, very handsome, with shiny black hair, a husky, growly voice, a jaw so sharp Annette wondered if it could cut her, long lean fingers, long lean...well...and intense amber eyes that were suddenly looking right at Annette.

She felt her own eyes widen in response, and she quickly turned to look at Linhardt, who - thankfully for her, not so much for him - still looked a bit green.

"You okay?" she asked, glad to have someone else to focus on. "You're not going to throw up, are you?"

"So long as Leonie keeps that leg to herself," Linhardt said. "Actually, I think I might take a second to....doze..."

Seteth of course chose that moment to come striding into the room, and Leonie kicked the back of Linhardt's chair with her still-whole leg.

"Alright, class," Seteth said, sounding as bored and snippy as he ever did. "Today you're going to begin work on determining the overarching theme for your midterm projects, along with the individual components that will help you best examine your chosen theme. Once you've divvied up assignments and created a schedule for me to look at in terms of when you will be working on what, including your two mandatory external meetings, then you're free to go."

"Mandatory external meetings?" Annette repeated, louder than she'd intended, but her trickle of panic meant she wasn't as bothered by Seteth's severe look at her interruption as she otherwise might have been. She didn't remember anything about mandatory external meetings! Two of them? What? When was she supposed to find the time for that??

"Excuse me," Leonie said, raising her hand. She didn't wait for Seteth to call on her before she continued. "Some of us have a lot of obligations outside of class. Soo...are we exempt from these meetings?"

Annette thought that was a bit rich coming from someone who could usually be found hanging around the school's cafeteria with a group of her teammates. On the bright side (maybe), Seteth didn't seem to think Leonie's excuse held water either.

"No," he said, crossing his arms and leveling her with a glare. "These meetings are mandatory. They are required to take place in the library's study rooms, for which you have to sign in to access. If your name is not on the sign-in sheet, then you will lose participation points."

Leonie grumbled and sank lower in her seat. Well, while the news wasn't the worst - they'd have to show up at least twice for something - it didn't necessarily mean that Annette still wouldn't wind up taking care of this whole project entirely by herself. Annette had been in plenty of group projects before, and almost none of them had gone well. If Leonie was trying to get out of doing work to Seteth's actual face, then there was no way anything she wrote was going to be up to par. Likewise, Linhardt was already dozing off, and Annette had no idea what to expect from Felix, except she thought she could still feel his eyes boring into the back of her head. Ugh. Why did she pick to wear her hair up in her weird little side buns today? If she'd known Felix would be right behind her, she'd have left it down.

Of course, she was probably overreacting. He wasn't looking at her, he was probably on his phone like everyone else, paying next to no attention.

Annette pulled out her planner from her bag, already stuffed full with notes and post-its even two weeks in to the semester. The sight of it was enough to make her feel tendrils of panic, just knowing the sheer amount of material inside, but she took a deep breath and opened it up, taking a look at the current month and flipping between that and the next, the weeks leading up to midterms. They were busy, to put it mildly. She had a pretty steady slew of due dates already marked in alongside her work hours and her choral practice hours, and the idea of fitting in what would essentially amount to four extra papers...

She took another deep breath, then another. She could feel the press of panic more insistently now, and she tried hard to tamp down on the feeling, to pay attention to her own breaths.

Surprisingly, she was jolted out of it by a voice - Felix. "I can meet on the 29th. Later. I have practice until 7:30," he said, sighing heavily.

Really? She twisted in her chair to look at him, but he was staring down at the calendar app on his phone. That was....more encouraging than Annette had expected. She glanced at the 29th of Guardian Moon in her calendar, a Thursday, and at her work hours. "I can meet just after eight," she said. "It'll take me about five minutes to walk from the theater."

"What, you're an actress or something?" Leonie asked, her voice far too laden with scorn for someone who painted her face every time one of the sports teams did anything around this school.

"Oh, no," Annette said, embarrassed even though she hadn't done anything. Story of her life. "Of course not."

"I thought you were in the choir?" Linhardt asked, which was surprising.

Annette blushed, and she desperately wished they could talk about anything else. "I mean, yeah, I'm in the choir, but that's not acting or anything. I'm pretty easily covered there by the good singers, but acting would just be a no." She laughed, the sound a little too high. "Could you imagine me acting? It would be terrible. No, I just work there."

Leonie was looking at her with both eyebrows raised, clearly thinking Annette was crazy, and even Linhardt was frowning at her as if he couldn't quite make sense out of what she was saying. She didn't want to know what Felix's expression was, so she cleared her throat and looked back at her schedule again. "So...the 29th?"

"At 8," Linhardt said. "I can make that work."

"Ugh," Leonie said. "Fine. I'll cancel some things."

"You don't have anything to cancel," Felix said with clear disdain. "Your schedule is basically the same as mine."

"Yeah, but I have _social obligations_ , unlike you," Leonie said. "You're never going to get ahead if you don't actually talk to people, Felix. Connections are everything. Connections and training go hand in hand. What's the point if no one likes you enough to pick you for anything."

Felix didn't reply except to sigh heavily and apparently slouch low in his seat, because suddenly his boots were braced on either side of Annette's chair. She froze slightly. That was...very close. Why were these desks so close?

"What about the second day?" she asked, her voice again ranging almost an octave higher than normal as she flipped to the next month. It was similarly busy, but as long as they stayed away from the play rehearsals in the middle of the month, then everything would be fine. Annette might not be in the play, but working at the box office of the theater meant she got roped into helping out with every single production. It was fine - she liked feeling like part of the community, but it ate up an awful lot of time. Really, if they could meet early, maybe Annette would then have enough time to figure out how to schedule the fact that she would probably have to write all four papers before she had to start doing through the intensive tech period from the 17th to the 21st -

"I suppose I can do the 19th," Leonie grumbled. 

Annette bit back a groan. Seriously? Right in the middle? Maybe everyone else -

"Perfect, as can I," Linhardt said, and Annette's hopes dropped. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that maybe Felix would be the one who -

"...I suppose that's fine," he said.

Well crap. Annette didn't want to be the only member of the group to be difficult, even though the rational part of her brain was screaming at her that if she was going to be doing the whole thing, she should be able to say when she could meet. But, of course, her innate desire (pathological need, Mercie had once called it in the nicest way it was possible for someone to describe a person as pathological) to make everyone get along, to avoid conflict, made her peep out: "sounds good!"

Dorothea, lead actress and director and basically everything else, was going to kill her. Maybe if Annette told her now....

"Great!" Leonie said. "Guess we're done! Annette, you can go give our dates to Seteth, right? I'm out of here!"

"Wait, we didn't decide..." Annette started, but Leonie was already up and moving towards the classroom door.

The boots disappeared at the edges of her chair, and then Felix was getting up too, picking up his notebook. He briefly met Annette's eyes and gave her a stiff nod - surprising her; that was almost cordial - before he turned and strode out of the room. What the hell? They'd only done one part of the assignment. What was she supposed to tell Seteth, who had just watched them go with a raised eyebrow? If she admitted that she didn't know what they were going to be working on, that would make the whole group look bad, and she might get them in trouble when they weren't even in the room. But she couldn't just pick a topic by herself! What if she picked a bad one, or a really hard one, or -

"You look panicked."

Annette jerked her head toward Linhardt, who hadn't sat up from his slouch. At least he wasn't abandoning her, she supposed. "Oh, I just...we didn't finish deciding what our project was going to be about."

Linhardt nodded slowly. "Well," he said, "what would you like it to be about?"

Annette blinked at him. "I- what? I can't decide that. It's a group project."

"A group project where half the group just left," Linhardt said. "I think that indicates whatever we decide on is fine."

Annette dropped her head into her hands. "This is going to be so much work. I don't know how I'll get everything done."

"Well, I guess that's the purpose of a group project, isn't it?" he asked with a yawn, stretching his arms high over his head and cracking his back in about three different places. Annette felt vaguely jealous - she had way too many knots for that. "You don't have to do it all alone."

"Yeah, sure," she said, looking down at her schedule again. She supposed if she tried to get her music theory project done before tech week, even though she wouldn't have all the information yet, then this could be doable. And if she left her Civics paper for the evenings during tech....and did her literature essay sometime in there...

"First instinct," Linhardt said abruptly. "What's our topic?"

Annette blinked. "I don't know," she said automatically, then looked at their time period. "Maybe...embracing ugliness?"

Now it was Linhardt's turn to blink. "Interesting," he said. "So the movement away from beauty and toward embracing a more nontraditional aesthetic as inspired by the horrors of the world?"

Annette stared at him, then immediately began scribbling it down on her paper. "You made that sound way better than I did."

He shrugged, folding his arms over his chest. "Thank you."

"Okay," Annette said, writing that down, then tapped her chin with her pen. "I suppose I don't know what Felix or Leonie would want to work on, but since they probably won't do much of anything and I'll wind up having to do their parts anyway -"

"Relax," Linhardt said, the yawn that broke halfway through the word apparently attempting to lead by example. "You're getting ahead of yourself and causing undue worry and stress. It'll all work out. If it does go belly up, I won't leave all the work to you."

That was...surprisingly reassuring. At least she hadn't been the only one who noticed that things were weird. "Thanks Linhardt," she said. Then, thinking back to Mercedes' questions - "Hey, how come you wound up in this class so late too?"

"Me?" he asked, eyes opening wide for a moment. "Oh, I failed it the first two times. Slept right through." He smiled. "I'll stay awake this time, though. Don't worry."

Annette let her head thunk down onto her desk. She was so deeply, thoroughly screwed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So these chapters are going to vary a bit in terms of length. It's just how they came out when I was writing them - no particular rhyme or reason! Thanks for reading and putting up with them!


	3. Uneven Exchange

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annette was partially right. Dorothea probably would have been annoyed at Annette needing a day off during tech week if she hadn't had conniving plans of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm planning on uploading the next chapter later this week, but time apparently has no meaning anymore. I'll do my best.

Annette had been correct - Dorothea was not happy with her. However, Dorothea was a reasonable person, a (fairly) nice human being, and was also a student who worked her ass off for the school theater. That meant that, while unhappy to learn Annette would be cutting out early on one of the busiest tech days in the lead-up to the fall play, she was impressed that Annette already had her schedule set up and was apparently willing to cover in case Professor Manuela got mad about it. Really, Annette could have just gone to Manuela, since she had a woman's health class with her, but Manuela was more than a little scatterbrained. There was little to no chance she would have remembered their conversation by the time the actual night in question rolled around. Dorothea would remember, because Dorothea remembered everything. If she said they'd make it work, then Annette believed her.

But of course it wasn't that simple.

"You want me to do _what_?" Annette asked, her voice hitting a level of shrillness that caused a small section of the cafeteria to pause and look in her direction. Annette blushed and ducked her head, furiously stabbing at her salad. "You want me to do _what_?" she asked again, much more quietly and through gritted teeth.

Dorothea, who was sitting across from Annette with that pleasant smile she always had, made a clicking sound with her tongue. "C'mon, Annie. Say you will."

Annette felt like she'd walked into some kind of twilight zone. "But - but I can't be in a movie!"

"You're acting like it's some kind of dirty picture," Dorothea laughed, which immediately made Annette _more_ nervous, because she hadn't even thought of that. "It's just for my midterm. You won't even have to talk! It's meant to be a silent film. All you'll have to do is some pantomime."

"B-but I can't act!" Annette protested, panic welling up.

Dorothea rolled her eyes and sat back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. "No, you just _think_ you can't act. Just like how you think you're not a very good singer when you're one of the best in the whole choir. And you know I adore your little songs. I can't believe I had to find out about them from _Claude_ of all people."

"Ugh," Annette said, giving up on her salad and burying her head in her hands. Claude, of the science track (or something - his fingertips were always stained from chemicals, and Annette wondered how long it would be before he was arrested for poisoning someone or something), was also heavily involved in theater. He was a close friend of Dorothea's, and though he was friendly enough, he was not to be underestimated. The first thing that Annette had learned about Claude was that he made a point to be absolutely _everywhere_. She had been in the basement of the theater during her freshman year, looking for some piece of scenery that Manuela wanted to try out on stage that evening. As she often did while she was alone, Annette had started singing to herself, mostly to distract from the fact that she was pretty sure she'd just seen an entire family of big black spiders wandering around in that far corner where the glow of the bare bulb light didn't quite reach. She'd begun writing silly little songs when she was a child, encouraged by her mother, and the habit of singing when nervous had never quite gone away. 

So, there she'd been, digging through an old crate for a piece of wood that couldn't possibly be as important as Manuela had made it out to be, singing her song about exploding libraries, when suddenly a throat had cleared behind her.

"Need a little help?" Claude had asked once she'd stopped screaming, smirking the whole time. "By the way, that's a great song - I suspect original composition. Tell me - how does it end?"

Annette had been mortified, even more so when it was clear Claude wasn't going to just forget what he'd heard. Granted, Claude discovering her little secret hadn't all been bad; he was the one who'd then "convinced" her to go out for the choir, and she wound up absolutely loving it. But since then he'd also been trying to get her to participate random other things, including a folk band he kept claiming he was going to start, which got a little irritating. Despite everything, though, Annette liked him. Mostly. He was always scheming, but at least he seemed to not be actively scheming against Annette personally, so she supposed that was something.

However, knowing that Claude was the other person involved in this midterm project of Dorothea's didn't exactly fill her with confidence. "I still can't believe he told you about my songs." She paused, lifting her head up slightly. "Actually, I can't believe he hasn't told anyone else."

Dorothea laughed. "Claude likes you," she said, "and he very sincerely wants you to be in everything we do. You know my feelings - of course we were going to try and wrangle you into participating in our midterm project." She shrugged an elegant shoulder. "I just didn't expect you to hand me such a perfect quid pro quo."

Annette chewed her lip. "Well...what would I have to do?"

Dorothea's face assumed a look of angelic innocence, which naturally sent Annette into high alert. "Oh, nothing much. Like I said, it's a silent film. But, the premise is pretty typical."

Annette narrowed her eyes, reaching for her discarded salad fork. "Which is?"

"Well," Dorothea said, leaning forward across the small table, her cleavage on flattering display as she batted her eyes. Annette self consciously tugged her own fuzzy cardigan more tightly closed over her turtleneck. "Have you seen any of the old hero films? You know, the bandit robs the bank, kidnaps the girl, then leaves her all tied up and helpless on the train tracks for the hero to save?"

Annette's bad feeling was morphing into a black mass of dread. "Uh..."

Dorothea smiled brightly, reaching out to push the salad bowl away so she could wrap her fingers around Annette's wrist. "You, my dear, are going to be the one tied to the tracks! Figuratively speaking. We won't actually tie you to anything potentially deadly."

"Oh, good," Annette said faintly.

"Anyway," Dorothea said, still holding Annette's wrist, "we're doing a little bit of role reversal. I get to play the swashbuckling hero, and Claude's going to be the mustache-twirling villain. The whole thing only has to be about five minutes long, and it's supposed to be silly - not some kind of festival submission - so it'll be fun! What do you say?"

That....well. Annette wasn't quite sure what she was expecting, but that didn't sound too bad. "Um...I mean, I guess? Are you sure you're not going to tie me up to any train tracks?" She paused. "Or...at all?"

Dorothea smirked. "I promise - we'll only tie you up a little bit. But no, no train tracks. We won't even be going outside." She shook Annette's wrist slightly. "Are you in? I promise I won't even mention you having to leave for your group project with...who's in it, again?"

"Leonie, Linhardt, and Felix," Annette said, letting her wrist be waggled around.

Dorothea made the appropriate faces for the first two (a wince followed by a thoughtful tilt of her head), but when Annette said Felix's name, Dorothea's face smoothed over. "Interesting group," she said.

Annette, who hadn't missed the reaction, tugged on the wrist in Dorothea's grasp. "What? What was that look for? Am I completely screwed? That was for Felix, right? Is he terrible? I don't even know Felix!"

Dorothea shushed her, bringing her other hand up so she could hold Annette's hand between both of hers. "No, it's nothing. Felix and I have a little bit of a history, that's all," she said, and Annette was suddenly both burning with curiosity and also feeling kind of embarrassed that she'd been looking at him with interest in class. Of course Felix would be interested in beautiful girls who looked like Dorothea, not someone who still looked twelve like Annette.

"A bad history?" Annette guessed.

Dorothea shook her head. "Just...a history. Now. Back to the important thing. My film." She fixed Annette with a squinty-eyed, silly approximation of a serious look. "Are you in?"

Annette sighed, slouching back in her chair as soon as Dorothea released her hand. "Oh, I suppose."

"Great!" Dorothea said, sitting up and raising both fists triumphantly into the air. Then, with a air of practiced concern, she tapped her chin with her finger. "By the way, you wouldn't be opposed to kissing me, would you?"

Annette let her head thunk down onto the table and groaned. This semester was going to be such a mess.

"Oh, cheer up," Dorothea said, picking up one of the french fries left on her own plate and popping it into her mouth. "You should be happy it'll be me. When we initially wrote the script, Claude tried to be the hero."

Yep. Definitely, undeniably a mess.


	4. First Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first library meeting goes about as Annette had expected...  
> ...and then gets a little better.

Despite possibly having sold her soul to Dorothea and Claude, and the worry _that_ entailed compounded with concern over the group project, the days leading up to the first group outside meeting went by relatively quickly. The evening of the 30th found Annette sitting in their assigned study room in the library, waiting for the others to arrive and trying not to check the time on her phone for the fifty-sixth time. She'd failed, and was about to broach the fifty-seventh, when - shockingly - Leonie arrived, sweaty and out of breath as if she'd just run straight from practice. She dumped her bags in the corner and collapsed in the chair next to Annette, pulling out a ginormous water bottle and taking a huge slug from it.

"You okay?" Annette asked once Leonie thunked the bottle down onto the table.

"Practice was a bitch," Leonie said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "It's hard when nobody else pulls their weight, you know? I mean, I know I'm obviously the best on the team, but c'mon."

Annette just nodded, because she never for the life of her could remember what sport Leonie played, and she wasn't going to start caring now. "Well, you're the only one on time. Have you heard anything from Felix or Linhardt?"

"Like I'd talk to Linhardt," Leonie said with a scoff. "He's such a screw-up. I don't know how he's still in this school. Do you know he failed this class twice? How do you fail a class twice?"

Annette didn't understand it either. However, she also didn't really want to badmouth Linhardt, since he'd at least promised he'd get his part of the paper done, so she clumsily redirected the conversation. "What about Felix?"

Leonie scoffed and took another swig from her water bottle. "Screw Felix. I bet he won't even show up," she said. "He was still training when I left."

Annette frowned. "You saw him? You didn't go get him?"

Leonie looked at her like she was crazy. "Uh, no. I don't go over in that section of the training center. It's all guys, and it smells HORRIBLE. He can figure out how time works on his own."

Annette felt that knot of worry that had taken up residence in her stomach start to twist. Well, she supposed that was confirmation enough; she really didn't think "figuring it out" was Felix's problem. "Caring at all" was probably more like it. "Well, since you and I are here, we might as well get started. What are you writing about for your part of the paper?"

Leonie sighed, slouching lower in her seat. "Oh, I don't know. Just give me a topic or something. It doesn't matter."

Annette stared at her but was prevented from responding by Linhardt, who slouched in with a yawn. "Apologies. I was napping in the stacks and missed my first alarm."

"What else is new?" Leonie scoffed, pulling out her phone to look at the texts she'd apparently gotten since she'd sat down. Annette, now that she didn't need it to check the time, slid her phone into her pocket. She had also been getting texts, all day in fact, but each and every one was from Claude about the project. She'd only read the first handful, but that had been enough to make her want to pinch him very, very hard, so she'd been ignoring the others.

Apparently, he was very, very sold on the idea of Annette and Dorothea finishing out the movie with a kiss. 

Linhardt let Leonie's insult roll off of him, sitting down on Annette's other side. "I've picked my topic," he said.

"Oh?" Annette asked, perking up. "What did you choose?"

"Art Deco," Linhardt said. "I agree with the sentiment of the time that it is a particularly ugly style, but certainly not something worth rioting over."

"You think it's ugly?" Leonie asked incredulously, looking up from her phone. "That's, like, _the style_. And isn't that from the 20's anyway? You can't use that."

"The style gained prominence in the 20's, but it originated prior," Linhardt said, then turned his head to look at Annette. "I believe it will fit well with your topic."

Annette nodded. She'd already decided by the evening the project had been assigned that she was going to do Stravinsky's controversial ballet, _The Rite of Spring_. She suspected that she knew where Linhardt was going with his connection, and it was kind of reassuring. "The theater it was performed in was one of the first to feature the Deco style, right?"

"Correct," Linhardt said, sounding as smug as he ever did. "It will create a nice little bridge between our parts of the project."

Leonie groaned. "I can't believe you guys decided you wanted to work with ugliness. That's such a weird theme."

"Do you have a better one?" Linhardt asked, a bit of flint coming into his tone. Annette was both grateful and impressed, not only that Linhardt had clearly taken her own topic into account when considering his own, but also because she knew there was no way Leonie had any idea for a theme; she was just being difficult. But if it had just been Annette, she probably would have folded over. Clearly, Linhardt wasn't going to let that happen.

Annette thought she probably understood how Linhardt was still in school after all.

"No," Leonie whined, "but now I have no idea what to write about."

"What were you thinking before?" Annette asked innocently. Beside her, the corner of Linhardt's mouth twitched upwards.

Leonie finally put her phone down on the table so she could cross her arms over her chest. "Doesn't matter," she grumbled. "Just tell me what to write."

"Do we know what Felix wants to do?" Annette asked, looking at Linhardt.

Linhardt sighed. "No, and since he isn't here, he can chew on the scraps. Leonie, you get Futurism."

"That's 1909," Annette said.

Lindhardt slouched a little lower in his seat, linking his hands behind his head and stretching his long legs out underneath the table. "Yes, but their more successful manifesto was in 1914. Also, many of them died in WWI after glorifying the necessity of war, vastly underestimating its ugliness and horror, so it still works."

Annette braced herself for an argument, but Leonie simply sighed. "Fine," she said, picking up her phone again and spelled out the word as she typed. "F-u-t-u-r-i-s-m. I'll do it."

Annette thought that was probably unlikely, but still. "Okay...well, I think that's pretty good, honestly. Three of us have topics, and we have an overarching theme - confronting ugliness and discomfort in art rather than beauty and ideal."

"Sounds wonderful," Lindhardt said, yawning. "I may begin looking for some books on the topic before my next nap."

But even as he said it, his eyes were already drooping. Leonie, meanwhile, was back on her phone, tapping entirely too much to actually be looking into her topic. Annette had already gone and gotten all of the books that the library had to offer on her own subject, lugging them along in her too-heavy backpack. She was going to have spinal problems for sure when she was older - she kind of had them now, she had to admit, bringing up a hand to rub at one tense shoulder - but she was prepared for writing this paper. However, she was also tired, and she didn't really like walking back to her apartment alone after it got too late. Garreg Mach was a safe campus, and the area she and Mercie lived wasn't very far, but still.

"Okay," she said. "Well then, when should we aim to have some kind of first draft written?"

"First draft?" Leonie scoffed. "I'm just gonna write the thing and turn it in." At what must have been a look of panic on Annette's face, Leonie rolled her eyes. "Don't worry, I'm a good writer. It'll be fine. I'll...I dunno, bring an outline or something for the next meeting."

"The paper is due a week after the first meeting," Annette reminded her somewhat shrilly, not finding this acceptable at all.

Leonie sighed again, heavily and put-upon. "And I'll have it done, okay? Look, I'm clearly not the one you have to worry about. Linhardt's asleep again -" It was true, he really was - "and Felix is Goddess-knows-where. If I see him at the training grounds," Leonie said, cutting off Annette as she opened her mouth, "I'll let him have it, I promise. But for now, I gotta go.

"What?" Annette asked, pulling out her phone again to look at the time, sliding past another three messages from Claude. "We've only been here ten minutes."

Leonie shrugged. "Seteth never set a limit for time. I'm here, I have a topic, and I'll get it done. Stop worrying about it."

Annette wondered if telling someone to stop worrying had ever worked in the history of time ever. But she didn't say anything else as Leonie gathered up her gear and headed out, leaving Annette with a softly snoring Linhardt.

Annette sat back in her chair with a huff. Well....she supposed she might as well head home, then. She had done all that she could do for today with this particular project. Now was the time to go sit in her tiny living room with Mercie and start doing some research. That would be much more pleasant than this.

"Linhardt," she said gently as she started to pack up her bag again. "Meeting's over."

"I know," he mumbled. "Can still hear."

"Okay, well...thanks for having my back."

Linhardt nodded. "Of course. I'm going to continue sleeping. You can turn off the light as you go."

Annette thought it might have been nice to ask if she'd be okay getting home, but then, it was Linhardt. He'd helped her out once today - best not to expect too much. So, she pulled on her coat and her bag, checked at the front desk that she wasn't required to sign out of the study room (she wasn't), and stepped through the library's double doors and into the cold winter air. She bundled her scarf more firmly around her neck to ward off the chill and tugged her knit cap down over her ears, sticking her mittened hands back into her pockets as quickly as she could. She made her way down the steps to the sidewalk, checking for icy patches, and started toward home.

She'd been walking for five minutes or so, lost in her thoughts, when she became aware that she was no longer just hearing her own footsteps. There was another set, further away and getting closer. She stopped and looked around, trying to catch sight of whoever it was. She was still on campus technically, on the far end, but it was quieter here than elsewhere. She was coming up on the parking lot entrance for the furthest side of the dorms, right next to the training center, so probably it was someone leaving from their workout. They were just obscured by the weird hedges that were planted all over the campus to apparently block views and lead to lots of pedestrian bumps and crashes if anyone dared to take a corner too quickly. Annette had no idea who had thought these hedges were a good idea.

She continued down the sidewalk, but paused again when a figure stepped out onto the sidewalk about four yards in front of her. It was definitely a man, and a tall (taller than Annette, though that wasn't hard) lean one at that, though he was clearly bundled up against the cold. He was in shadow, but he seemed to be looking at a piece of paper in his hand, and with his other, Annette could see the glow of a cell phone screen. So, probably harmless, then. She'd cross the street anyway, just in case.

She'd just stepped off the curb when the man pressed a button on his phone, pulling it up to his ear. A second later, when she was halfway across the street, Annette's cell phone began to vibrate.

She frowned, pulling it out of her pocket. The number was unknown, and she chanced a glance at the man. He was looking up in her direction now, leaning forward as if trying to see. It wasn't exactly pitch black, but the lighting wasn't great. She couldn't quite make out...

"Annette?" the man called.

She peered at him, surprised. "...Felix?"

Felix Fraldarius tapped at his phone with his thumb - he must have those expensive touch gloves or whatever they were - and the call on Annette's phone cut off. She stepped back up onto the curb and approached him slowly.

He had no similar compunction and moved toward her rapidly, long legs striding easily over the distance. "Sorry. For the call." He slid his phone into his pocket. "Ingrid gave me your number."

"Oh," Annette said. "That's okay." She paused, then - "We were wondering what happened to you."

He winced slightly, not quite looking at her as he came to a stop much closer than she was expecting - there was maybe only a foot between them. "I was training with Dimitri. The man is a beast - he doesn't know when to quit, and by the time Sylvain bothered to tell me what time it was..." He trailed off, bringing a hand up to the back of his neck, rubbing over the soft black material of the scarf he had looped over his black woolen coat.

"Oh. Um...it's okay," Annette said, not sure what else to say and still a little nervous from his proximity. She could smell him; he smelled really good for someone who had just come out of a gym, like pine and warm amber, maybe. She cleared her throat and tried to focus. He was probably just concerned that he was going to get docked for his failure to attend the meeting. "We left kind of early, so if you go to the library, you might still be able to sign in so you get the points."

Felix made no move to go anywhere. "Did everyone pick topics?" he asked instead. He still wasn't quite looking at her, though occasionally his eyes would flick to hers and then away again. Annette wasn't quite sure what to make of that. He was standing very close, which meant he couldn't be too repulsed by her, but if that was the case then why..?

"Oh, yes. I picked -"

"I know yours," he interrupted, the very corner of his mouth flicking up into what almost could have been a smile. "You said in class."

"Right, duh," Annette said, flustered. She took a step back from him, just to get her bearings cleared, and then began again. "Linhardt said he wants to do Art Deco -"

"That'll go well with your ballet."

Annette blinked. So Felix _had_ been doing the readings. "Um. Yes. Leonie couldn't decide what to do, so we gave her Futurism."

Felix scoffed. "The Futurists were idiots. There is no glory in violence or war. But that leaves my topic open, so I don't care."

"What's your topic?" Annette asked. It was getting cold, and she was beginning to fidget slightly, trying to keep the cold from seeping in too deeply.

Felix apparently caught the movement. "You're freezing. Where are you going?"

Annette blinked. "Oh, just home. It's fine."

"Where's that?"

"Oh, um, Excalibur and Gale. But that's not -"

"Come on," Felix said, and turned in that direction to begin walking. "It's too late for you to be out by yourself anyway."

"It's only 8:30!"

"Closer to 9. Plus, it's winter - it's dark."

"I can walk by myself," Annette said, feeling strangely petulant even though Felix - Felix, of all people - was doing exactly what she'd wished Linhardt would have done.

"Sure," Felix said. "But you're not by yourself, so just take it for what it is."

That was the problem - Annette didn't know _what_ this was, but she wasn't going to say that. "Do you know what you want to write about?"

"Trench poetry," Felix replied immediately. He gave her a sidelong glance. "World War I. It fits in with the theme."

Annette nodded. It sure did - it was poetry of the bleakest kind, genuinely attempting to make art out of the depths of despair. "That'll work really well. It'll be a good ending to the project."

Felix inclined his head, then demanded: "Tell me about your ballet."

Annette blanked. He wanted her to tell him about..."You mean _Rite of Spring_? Or..."

Felix turned his head toward her, though his profile unreadable in the dim light. "There's another ballet?"

"Oh, no," Annette said. "I just - no. I thought maybe you were talking about, like, the school play."

"No," Felix said, and then didn't say anything else.

"Um...okay." Annette said, trying very hard not to chew on her lip. It was cold, and they were chapped now, and she'd just regret it. So, instead, she did exactly what he asked - started talking about everything she'd found so far on the ballet. She talked the rest of the walk - only two or three minutes usually, when she was walking quickly. However, though she'd expected Felix to be a rapid walker, wanting to get this over with as quickly as possible, he wasn't moving very fast. The trip probably took an extra five minutes, and when they reached her cross street, he stood there and let her finish her thought even though, in her opinion, she'd just been rambling for at least the last two minutes.

"Anyway," she said, "sorry for talking your ear off. Thank you for walking me!"

Felix took one gloved hand out of his pocket and pointed at hers, where she'd slipped her phone earlier. "If you ever need someone to walk you back late at night, you have my number."

Annette blinked and thought maybe she'd misheard, but there was no way she could have. "Oh - thank you! That's very sweet of you." At that, Felix's face contorted into something complicated, so Annette hurried to continue. "Except now I have to worry about you getting back okay. Where do you live?"

"Moralta and Levin," Felix said. "It's not far." He paused. "I can send you a message when I get there."

"Oh, would you?" Annette asked, bouncing slightly. "I'd really appreciate it, Felix!"

If Annette had been a more fanciful person, she would have sworn that she caught a blush pass over Felix's cheeks, but it must have just been the shifting shadows from the street lamp.   
"Right," he said. "Well....see you."

"Bye!" Annette said, and then stood there.

So did he. When she kept looking at him, he raised an eyebrow.

"What?" she asked, putting her fists on her hips. "I just want to make sure you don't get carried off by marauders as you walk down the street!"

"I have similar concerns," Felix said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Annette huffed. "I live right there." She pointed. "I'm not going to get stolen between here and my front door."

"Stranger things have happened," Felix replied, narrowing his eyes. He was looking straight at her, something she hadn't realized he didn't normally do until suddenly the weight of those brown eyes were on her.

They stood there staring at each other for a moment, until Annette gave in and threw her arms up in the air. "Oh, that's not - fine, you win!" she said. "But don't forget to text me."

"I won't," Felix said, staying firmly where he was until Annette was all the way inside of her front entryway, the door closed behind her. And five minutes later, he texted her.

" _Home_ ," it said, and Annette didn't want to think about why, exactly, that one word made her feel so warm inside. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo sorry to everyone who maybe thought this was going to become a Dorothea/Annette fic? We're definitely staying Annette/Felix, but is it better if I promise you'll get that kiss? Eventually? Someday?
> 
> Also, I know I'm mixing things from the game in with things from the real world, but I'm not creative enough or able to pay close enough attention to detail to make things line up effectively in the world of Fodlan. Sorry!


	5. Navigation and Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annette goes to a rehearsal, meets Sylvain, and has a realization.

"Claude!" Annette snapped, stomping her foot. "I am not letting you sling me over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes!"

"Okay, okay," Claude said, holding up his hands protectively in front of himself as if he was talking down a particularly perturbed tiger instead of just one mildly incensed Annette. They were standing in one of the rehearsal rooms in the theater building, going over Annette's role in Claude and Dorothea's short film. "But think about the way it'll look on screen!"

Annette groaned, rubbing a hand over her face. "Why did I agree to this?"

"Just let him try it once, Annie," Dorothea said from her position beside the door, batting her eyelashes.

Claude gave Annette his most winning grin and opened his arms for her. She groaned, long and loud, and then let her shoulders drop. "Fine."

Annette had actually done some dancing lessons before. She told herself that was all this really was, even as her stomach made contact with Claude's shoulder, and suddenly she was practically upside down in the air. 

"This is really uncomfortable!" she ground out, trying to remain limp despite the fact that all she wanted to do was push herself back off and down again.

"Feels fine to me," Claude said, latching his hands around the backs of her knees. "Maybe I should try spinning a little."

Annette resisted the urge to yell loudly. Instead, she settled for pinching his arm as hard as she could.

Claude jumped. "Ow! I wasn't going to actually do it! Geez."

"You absolutely were," Dorothea said, not sounding the least bit sorry for him. "No spinning - if Annette throws up, I'm not helping you clean. Try dashing off, though."

They did it a few times, during which Annette was pretty happy that this was all happening before lunch. When she was finally let back down on her feet, she felt kind of lightheaded. 

"Oops," Claude said, reaching out to touch Annette's warm cheek. "We'll have to remember not to do too many takes at once. You're looking red there."

"I think all the blood went into my skull," Annette said, rubbing her forehead. "And I've got a big one."

"Full of brains!" Claude said. "Have some water, it'll be fine. I've got to head to my next class anyway. Can we do this again on Wednesday?"

They parted with easy meeting plans, and on her way out, Annette stopped at the water fountains near the restrooms. She actually did feel better once she'd had a long drink, and she was just going in for another quick gulp when someone cleared his throat from behind her. 

"Bah!" she yelped, nearly tripping over her own backpack where she'd left it on the ground beside her. She whirled to find Sylvain Gautier standing behind her, looking amused. But then, he always looked kind of amused, so she couldn't be sure if it was due to her surprise or his general sense of smugness at life. 

She reminded herself to be nice. She didn't actually know Sylvain except for what Mercie told her. And Ingrid. And Petra. And other women who had experienced unpleasant after-dates with the guy. "Um," she said, trying to force herself into a more positive frame of mind again. "Hi?"

"Annette, right?" he said, the smirk morphing into what was clearly supposed to be a winning grin. "I don't think we've met."

"Hi, yes," she said. "I'm Mercedes' roommate."

"Oh, I know," he said, and then actually extended his hand to shake hers. "She talks about you all the time. I think we had a class together, but I can't imagine how we didn't get to know each other if we did. I'm sure I would have remembered!"

Annette certainly remembered. It had been a philosophy class that she hadn't particularly enjoyed. However, because it was a core requirement option, it meant a lot of people had been in it, and a lot of them had been very pretty female students. That's where Sylvain had spent his time - not with strange Annette. "I think I remember. Philosophy, right?" She shrugged, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I try not to remember that class."

Sylvain laughed, linking his hands behind his neck and taking a half step closer. She could smell his cologne - it smelled really good, and really expensive. Also, kind of strong. "Really?" He asked with a wink. "I didn't think you were the type to hate any of your classes."

Annette blinked at him, resisting the urge to step back. "There's a type like that?" 

Sylvain laughed again, lowering his arms. For some reason, it looked like his shoulders relaxed slightly. "I mean," he said, "you're friends with Ashe, right?"

"Ohhh," Annette said, nodding. "Okay, yes. But Ashe is a sweet angel. I don't think he's actually a human being."

"You may be onto something," Sylvain said with a wink. "Anyway, I thought it was about time that we officially meet."

Annette smiled. This was...not as bad as everyone had made him out to be. But then, she also wasn't the kind of girl who got propositioned in a hallway, so. "I'm glad you did. Mercedes enjoys having classes with you. She says you make them much less boring."

It was true, and she didn't think Mercedes would be mad at her for saying that much. In actuality, Mercedes didn't tell Annette much of anything about Sylvain except for what slipped out, because she knew Annette didn't really approve of him. However, since the guy himself was standing in front of her...

...and he was Felix's friend, wasn't he?

"Hey, you're friends with Felix, right?" Annette said.

Sylvain, who was still standing in front of her like he had nowhere to be, perked up a little, a glint coming into his eye. "Oh yeah. Felix and I are old friends."

She nodded. "I'm doing a group project with him."

"I've heard," Sylvain said with another wink. Before Annette could wonder what _that_ meant, he continued. "To be honest, I'd expected a lot more complaining about it, but then," he shrugged, "it's you."

It's her? "You expected me to complain?" she asked, not comprehending. 

Sylvain blinked. "Oh, no. I mean Felix. I expected him to be complaining about it every second of every day, but he hasn't said anything at all." He smirked. "Probably because you're in the group."

"Oh," Annette said, feeling her cheeks heat up even though she still wasn't sure if she was being complimented. "Um, thanks?"

"Don't thank me," Sylvain said, bending down to pick up her bag. "It's all Felix. Hey, where are you headed?"

That didn't clarify anything any further, but Annette suspected it wouldn't help to ask more questions. She didn't want Sylvain reporting back to Felix that she was trying to pry or anything. She hadn't received any texts from him since the "home" exchange, which was fine. She hadn't expected they'd suddenly become friends or anything, but still...the number sat heavily on her mind. She felt like she should do something with it, but she didn't know what. "Oh, I'm heading to the sciences building."

"Ugh," Sylvain said, "I'm in the opposite direction. I guess I can't accompany you after all."

"That's okay," Annette said. "I'm not usually over here anyway. I'm just helping Dorothea and Claude out with some kind of film project."

"Really" Sylvain asked, perking up slightly. "They're in my class. How'd you get involved?"

Annette sighed. "Dorothea. I needed to take a day off for the group project during the next play's tech run, which is basically the worst time to do it, so these are the terms of my forgiveness."

"Huh," Sylvain said. "I don't suppose I could convince you to tell me what their film is going to be about?" He grinned. "Felix is in my class. I may have convinced him to take it with me, and I'm pretty sure he'll never forgive me. He's being zero help at coming up with ideas."

Well, at least he wasn't any more forthcoming in other scenarios than he was in their group, she supposed. "Sorry, you'll have to ask Claude or Dorothea. It's their idea, not mine."

Sylvain let out a dramatic sigh as they came to the main doors, then picked up her bag and held it out to her. "Well, my lady, it was a pleasure meeting you, even if you didn't help me get a leg up on my academic enemies."

Annette giggled, buttoning up her coat all the way to her chin and winding her scarf around, sticking her hat down over her hair. "I'm sure you'll figure something out."

He saluted her, and Annette pushed the doors open, heading out into the cold. She thought she could feel his eyes on her as she walked away, but she didn't turn around to check. That had been strange for sure. It was too cold to text Mercedes while she was walking, so when she slid into her desk for her next class, five minutes to spare, she quickly pulled out her phone and sent off a text letting her friend know what had happened. Then, she paused for a moment, hovering over Felix's name in her text message list. Finally, she took a breath, tapped his name, and typed out a quick message. 

_"I just met Sylvain. He said you're working on a film project too."_

She sent it and set her phone down on her desk. However, not a minute later, it lit up with a text. Annette's heart beat in her throat - she fully expected it would be Mercedes, but...

_"Too?"_

Annette bit her lip, trying not to smile too widely. " _I'm helping out Dorothea and Claude with theirs._ "

Another moment, then. _"I was trying to figure out how I'd missed you being in the class."_

The fact that Felix texted in complete sentences was somehow surprising to Annette. Granted, their initial texting interaction had legitimately been "home," "thanks again," and "No problem," but she supposed he'd used capital letters and punctuation each of those times too, so. 

" _Just doing my civic duty. Also, the victim of extortion,_ " Annette typed back. Then - " _It was the only way Dorothea would let me out of tech week to make our project meeting._ "

"Ah," Felix texted back. And then - nothing. 

Well...she supposed that she should really be surprised (and pleased) he texted her back at all. Actually, she thought to herself as she slipped her phone back into her purse as class began, she was being a little unfair. Felix had been quite polite to her. He'd walked her back to her apartment and someone who was more of a jerk wouldn't have bothered replying to her texts at all. He was trying, and she should be grateful for that. It wasn't his fault that she had a...

She froze, her pen skidding to a stop in the middle of the notes she'd been taking. Oh. Oh no. She didn't have a....did she? She barely knew him! How could she...?

She was missing the lecture. She needed to pull herself together. Besides, of course she didn't, she was just being silly. Annette had always had a penchant for getting a little too attached, feeling a little deeper than other people seemed to. That's all it was - nothing else, no reason to worry.

But when class had ended and she pulled her phone out to text Mercedes about lunch, she knew she was lying to herself when her heart started beating three times as fast as she saw she had another unread text from Felix. He'd sent it only a moment ago - he'd probably been in class during the same time. 

" _I'm outside_ ," it read. 

Annette stared at it for a long moment, then looked up at the door. 

Felix was standing there, leaning against the wall on the other side of the hall, frowning down at his phone. He looked irritated, as he always did, but Annette looked down and realized her heart was racing so fast that her sweater was actually fluttering slightly with the force of it.

Oh no.

She definitely had a crush on Felix. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. Sorry this took so long - I've been running all over the place. I promise I'll respond to comments very soon! I just wanted to post this first.


	6. Felix has a Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Annette was feeling a little discombobulated over her quick attachment to Felix, that's nothing compared to how his brain is handling it. 
> 
> Mostly with swearing. A lot of swearing.

Felix glared down at his phone as he stood awkwardly outside the science building, leaning against the building and trying to look casual despite the fact that his spine refused to be anything other than ramrod straight. Notifications kept lighting up his screen, but not from the person he wanted; Ingrid was off on a tear about something to do with Dimitri and his patently ridiculous course load, which Felix really didn't care about. He'd say that the idiot boar could take care of himself, except that was a damn lie. Dimitri had never known his own limits, always overloading himself to an unreasonable degree whether it be sports, student government, classes, volunteer work, on and on and on, all to try and honor some memory of a dead father who had never been as judgmental in life as Dimitri seemed to think he was in death.

Felix knew a thing or two about dead weights. However, he wasn't under any insane theories that his brother Glenn was hanging around in some afterlife, judging every move he made. Though, if Glenn was going to judge anything, it would definitely be the fact that Felix was basically stalking a girl from his humanities class.

If Glenn had met Annette, even for a second, then he would have understood.

Felix, for all his prickly exterior and dark, dour heart, had a very definite type, and Annette was the embodiment of _all of it. F_ or the first time in his life he found himself wishing he had at least a little bit of Sylvain's nauseating charisma. Maybe if Felix could stop being a giant fucking weirdo creep all the time, Annette would stop being so afraid of him. He saw the way her cheeks reddened when she spoke to him, noticed how she stammered and practically tripped over herself whenever they were alone (or even generally near one another). But then, she also talked to him directly in a way that people often didn't. Usually, people - like Leonie - tried to engage with him combatively, as if they thought teasing or ribbing or insults were the way to get Felix to converse. They weren't.

Annette was.

When he'd seen her name pop up on his phone screen for a text earlier, he'd almost whacked his phone off of his desk in his haste to unlock it. He'd glanced around to make sure nobody had seen, but it was a stats class - nobody was paying attention to anything. When he'd read her message he'd texted back as quickly as possible, then fired off a text to Sylvain.

_"Why were you talking to Annette?"_

Sylvain, who should have been in class but was one of those students teachers hate, immediately replied. _"Uh, cause I saw her and I'm a nice guy."_

Sylvain was one of those people who liked to talk circles around everything. He did it easily - Sylvain's brain was impressive, and if Sylvain stopped chasing girls and screwing around long enough to actually apply himself to his full capability, Felix had no doubt that his friend would probably qualify as a goddamn genius. As it was, Sylvain just used those immense powers of intellect to annoy his friends. _"Gotta make sure she's good enough for my Felix."_

Felix growled under his breath, more so when he got Annette's responding text. She was helping out Claude? And _Dorothea?_ On principle, Felix didn't mind Claude except that the guy was always acting like they were playing some kind of strategy game at all times. He was constantly scheming, and almost everything he said was indirect. The guy was fucking cryptic, and while Felix didn't outright hate him, he also didn't like him very much. Dorothea was...well. Felix and Dorothea had a history, one Felix didn't really like thinking about. It involved his breakup with his high school girlfriend Bernie, a lot of drinking (on Felix's part) and bad decisions (on Felix AND Dorothea's parts), and thus the two of them tended to avoid talking to each other if they could. It wasn't, like, acrimonious or hostile or anything, but they'd both been in a bad place - he was pretty sure hers had involved Ferdinand - and it was better just to never, ever bring it up. In the aftermath, Felix had vowed he just wasn't going to bother with relationships, or women. Clearly he had no idea how to handle them. 

But Annette...

Felix had actually first seen her over a year ago. He had been at some party with Ingrid, accompanying her as he usually did if he knew she was in one of those moods where she wanted to drink. He hated college parties, never went to them if he could help it, and he especially hated college parties held in Caspar's dorm. Caspar was ultra competitive in every sense of the concept, and while Felix didn't mind him during actual training, Caspar was annoying as shit the rest of the time. Caspar's roommate, Linhardt, was always asleep on the couch at these parties, sitting upright, head tilted back as he snored. Most people gave him wide berth, so it only made sense that Felix had taken up space on the other end of the night, trying to decide when he'd be able to grab Ingrid and wrestle her back out the door.

But then, on that particular night, Annette had come. Felix wasn't a romantic, hated the notion of love at first sight, but...

She was just so fucking cute. 

Her red hair was fluffy, pinned back away from her face with barrettes, and she was wearing a patterned dress that flattered her soft curves. She laughed - a lot, he could hear it - and there was something in the way she looked at and talked to people that seemed so engaged, so genuine, and Felix couldn't take his eyes off of her. He had no idea who she was, or where she had come from, couldn't remember if she'd been in any of his classes, and when Ingrid had walked up to Annette and started talking to her, it had taken almost all of Felix's self control to wait until the end of the night to ask about her. 

"Who, Annette?" Ingrid had asked, her arm woven through his as they stumbled down the sidewalk.

"If Annette was the girl with the orange hair, then yes," Felix said. "I've never seen her before."

"Annette is sweet," Ingrid said in her usually succinct way, though it was drawled a little longer thanks to the alcohol. "She's nice. You'd like her."

Felix didn't doubt that. For as often as he and Ingrid butted heads, he also knew she probably understood him better than anyone else. It was why they tended to fight so often, though they'd been getting along better recently. "Maybe."

They hadn't spoken of it again until this semester with the group project. He'd mentioned his group casually to Ingrid, who immediately got a look in her eye that Felix didn't like. "What?" he'd asked.

"Nothing," she'd said nonchalantly, in a way that suggested _something_ and that she was probably planning something with Sylvain that Felix wouldn't like. And then, of course, Felix went and made everything worse all on his own when he trained through their first group meeting. 

He'd clocked Leonie leaving, but she always took forever to do anything, and Felix had assumed she probably was going to get changed before heading to the meeting. Plus, she knew he was there - she hadn't said anything, which probably meant Felix had more than enough time to go through one more fencing set with Caspar, who had been driving him up the goddamn wall all afternoon with challenges. Caspar was like one of those small dogs that wouldn't stop barking or gnawing at ankles, and so Felix had set about soundly beating him one more time (to Caspar's predictable howls of rage) with Sylvain as spectator. Sylvain and Caspar were on the boxing team, and honestly Felix had no idea how such a relatively small school managed to have so many damn sports teams. Ingrid had been trying to get him to join some sort of yoga karate thing, which he had been resisting, and he already did a little bit of the boxing and also the regular non-yoga-tainted kickboxing. But fencing was the thing he really excelled at, that he enjoyed, and that he was good at. 

Unfortunately, Dimitri was on the team too. 

For the most part, Felix could ignore Dimitri. They weren't often paired up against each other - Felix and Petra were pretty traditional partners, as someone (probably Ingrid) had helpfully told their coach, Byleth, that Felix and Dimitri didn't get along. Felix would have used more explicit language, pointing out that Dimitri being in the same car as the one that killed Glenn and somehow being the only one to walk out alive was a little more complicated than "didn't get along," but that would require Felix to _talk about it_ , and the mere thought was enough to make him itch. So, he and Petra stuck together during training and matches, and for the most part Dimitri kept his distance. 

However, apparently the sight of Felix soundly beating Caspar for some reason put it into the boar's head that Felix would be open to a friendly competition. And Felix, who was already pissed off at having wasted time with Caspar, who clearly had not done any additional fencing practice since the last fucking time he'd feverishly challenged Felix, had accepted before Sylvain could deflect and do whatever song and dance Sylvain did.

It hadn't gone well.

First, Felix was good. Felix was very, very good. Dimitri was also good, but he also was very strong. He was ridiculously tall, taller even than Sylvain, who was basically a monster, and with Dedue inexplicably not around, it meant that Dimitri was not as grounded as he sometimes was. He and Felix had engaged in a sword fight that had lasted nearly a half an hour, and resulted in a LOT of bruises on Felix whenever Dimitri would forget and use his full force to propel Felix back. People had gathered to watch at that point, and had tried to break up the match several times, but while Dimitri didn't know how to control his strength, Felix had absolutely no idea how to control his rage or his pride. He would not back down, and it wasn't until the two of them had turned to actual physical blows after a particularly hard hit from Dimitri that the match had been broken up, and Felix was able to storm off to check his phone. 

Felix had been so furious when he realized he'd missed the meeting that Ingrid, who had shown up at about five minutes toward the end and whose yelling had probably been the real reason the boar had backed the fuck off, had thought Felix was having some kind of rage induced heart attack and actually threw water at him. When he'd explained to her, through gritted teeth, what had happened, she'd been silent for a long moment, and then had given him the tip that Annette would have to walk past the gym to get back to her apartment. She'd given him Annette's number, and then sent him out.

Felix had waited, outside in the cold - like a _fucking creep_ \- for ten minutes before Annette had shown up. He hadn't called her until he realized that of course she'd be nervous about a man approaching her on a darkened street - again, like a _fucking creep_ \- but then, against all odds and despite the fact that he was just hanging around in the dark, she'd let him walk her home.

She'd seemed nervous, and at one point he'd been afraid that she thought he was some kind of serial killer, but then she'd insisted on receiving a text when he arrived home. When he'd entered into the apartment, he'd been in such a better mood than when he left that Sylvain, who Felix lived with and who was far sharper than he ever let on, had immediately become suspicious.

Which was why now, with the text from Sylvain on his phone (and the one from Annette), Felix knew his friend was plotting something. He just wasn't sure what it was. 

Then he stopped caring, because suddenly Annette was pushing her way through the door, her blue wool coat buttoned all the way up to her chin.

"Hey!" she said with a beaming smile, practically bouncing up to him. "Found you!"

He let the corner of his lips lift in greeting, sliding his phone into the pocket of his coat. "Good class?" he asked, and mentally punched himself in the face.

Annette didn't seem to mind, though. "It was okay. It's -" she glanced behind her, as if to make sure the teacher wasn't hovering, and then leaned in. "It's not my favorite," she whispered, and it was fucking adorable and Felix wanted to fucking die. 

He didn't know what to say, or how to say anything anymore, so he just nodded and tilted his head toward the stairs. She nodded too, tucking her mittened hands into her pockets. "So," she said. "You and Sylvain are in Dorothea and Claude's film class?"

Felix huffed, the mention of the class enough to annoy his tongue into working again. "It's an elective. I needed a replacement for a grade, and Sylvain - the idiot - decided he'd sign me up with him."

Annette looked slightly confused for a moment, but seemed to let it go. However, Felix could guess. "He's my roommate. He has access to my computer and my password page."

"Ah," she said, looking slightly amused, then sighed. "Honestly, at this point I wish I'd taken the class as an elective too if I'm going to wind up being in one of the dumb films anyway."

"I thought you did theater," he said. "Isn't this right up your alley?"

"Oh, no!" Annette said, her cheeks turning cotton candy pink. "I just work at the theater. I'm not an actress or anything."

"You sing, though," Felix said. He knew she did - she'd done a trio piece at the choir Christmas show just last month with Dorothea and Ferdinand.

The pink deepened. "Barely," she scoffed, no longer making eye contact.

Felix frowned, looking down at her. "I mean, I'm not exactly a music expert, but I'm pretty sure being able to sing "Holy Night" is kind of an accomplishment."

Now her face was almost red, and Felix was getting a little worried. "You heard that?" she squeaked, her voice coming out at a ridiculously high pitch.

"It was good," Felix said, feeling confused. "You looked happy."

That seemed to give Annette a moment's pause, and she looked at him. "Well," she said, "I was. Happy. It was fun. I just...didn't realize you were watching it."

He frowned at that. "Would you have been less happy?" he asked, still kind of confused but also something he thought he couldn't really feel anymore - hurt. She must really think he was a creep if she was freaked out by the very thought of him being at the concert. 

"Oh, no! No, I just - I'm always so nervous about things like that," she said, and from the way she was twisting her hands, he believed her, the tightness in his chest releasing slightly. "I probably would have been more nervous if I'd known you were out there." 

Felix blinked. "Well..." How did reassurances work? "You don't need to be."

She looked up at him and smiled, and he hoped _his_ cheeks weren't turning pink. "Thanks," she said. "So what are you and Sylvain doing for your film project?"

He sighed, shaking his head as they passed by a knot of students taking up the sidewalk. "No fucking idea. If Sylvain ever sat down long enough to decide, that would really help, because I don't have a clue."

He was momentarily worried when he realized just how much he was swearing, but Annette giggled and he relaxed. "Does it have to have a narrative?"

"Yeah," he grumped. 

She thought for a moment, tapping her mittened hand against her chin as they walked out into the cold bite of the afternoon wind. "What about something with your fencing? You could teach Sylvain how to fence. He could be kind of vaudeville about it, sort of bad, or clumsy, or silly." She grinned at Felix. "Then you could knock him over and stalk off."

Felix blinked. He supposed she knew about his fencing from Leonie. And honestly, as much as he didn't want to be in front of the camera, that...wasn't the worst idea. "Better than anything Sylvain's come up with," he said. "I'll propose it. We'll give you story credit."

Annette blushed again. "Oh, that's not necessary," she said. "It's just a silly idea."

"It's a good idea," he said firmly, glaring at her. "Are you always this self effacing? It's annoying."

When a complicated mix of expressions shifted over her face, Felix made a mental note to punch himself in the face two more times. He'd never been good at words, but miracle of miracles, flattery somehow seemed to win out over the insult. Annette smiled at him. 

"You're so grouchy," she said, "but you're also so sweet. How does that work?"

Now he knew for sure he was blushing, something that was confirmed by the way Annette's eyes widened. He looked away from her, trying to fix his attention instead on the people wandering around on campus between classes. "Shut up," he said. "You can walk yourself the rest of the way."

"Hey, I thought I just saved you with my genius film idea," Annette teased, and Felix let his eyes land near enough to her that he could see the broad grin from his peripheral vision. 

"That's why I'm not dumping you in the fishing pond," he said, "just abandoning you."

She laughed, and he felt the corners of his mouth twitching upward, even though he desperately wanted to keep his angry face on. "Well, I suppose I can make it the rest of the five steps into the library," Annette said. "All by myself."

"Text me when you get there," Felix said dryly. "So I know you made it safely."

Annette laughed again and reached out to punch against his arm. He staggered back slightly and glowered at her. "Physical abuse. I won't make it to our group presentation alive at this rate."

"You're silly," Annette said, which almost made Felix's brain explode out of his head given that he was certain no one had ever called him that ever, at least not since he was in single digits of age. "I'll see you later?"

"Don't forget about texting me when you're safely indoors," Felix reminded her, still not looking at her. He could feel the blush receding from his cheeks slightly, but he knew it was still there. He'd thought he'd beaten that out of himself, but apparently not. 

"Oh, go away!" Annette said, laughing, and so Felix took the opportunity to, well, take off. His long legs made quick work of the sidewalk, and soon he was around the side of the library building and away from anywhere Annette might see him. He sighed a little in relief, then felt disgust with himself. However, the dismay didn't last long - his phone vibrated in his pocket. He slid it out and tapped it, the pads of his gloves allowing him to interact with the screen despite the layer. 

" _Safely inside_!" read the text along with about four different smiley faces. 

Felix paused, took a breath, and then decided to drown. " _Not sure I believe it_ ," he typed. " _This could be a kidnapper_."

He held his breath, standing stock still on the middle of the freezing sidewalk, staring down at his phone as students passed him, giving him strange looks. A minute or so slid by, and then - 

_Bzzz_.

He tapped the image preview, and a selfie of Annette popped up, her elbow propped up on a particularly ridiculously large stack of books. He grinned, the sharp toothed one that everyone thought made him look scary but, in actuality, was a genuinely happy smile, and sent back a text.

" _Checks out. I accept the evidence_ ," he texted back, but he didn't move right away, instead standing and staring down at the image he'd been sent. His phone vibrated again, and he tapped back into the messages.

" _Where's my proof_?" was her responding text.

" _Of what_?" he typed back, though he knew exactly what she was asking for. 

" _How do I know you haven't been kidnapped_?" she texted back. " _Or that Sylvain hasn't stolen your phone? Or monsters?_ "

He hesitated, and then, after glancing around to make sure he was alone (which he was, largely because he was late for his next class), he pulled the phone out and took a glaring selfie. His cheeks were still lightly colored, but he figured that could probably be attributed to the fact that he was standing outside.

" _Only monster here is me_ ," he typed in accompaniment, slid the phone back in his pocket, and took off for his next class. He slipped in, his seat in the back thankfully still empty, and settled in. However, when he reached into his pocket to put his phone on silent, he couldn't help but pull it out one more time. 

" _Only good monsters, then_ ," Annette had typed back, and Felix knew he was fucking blushing all over again. He put his phone back into his pocket and, as soon as his professor had turned his back to begin writing on the board, Felix let his head thump down onto his desk.

He was so fucked. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, THESE have been an insane past few weeks. I suspect it won't be getting any better, but I do have more chapters of this, so woohoo! Or something. 
> 
> I hope everyone's okay! Also, thank you so much for all the comments! I think I replied to most of them now!! Sorry I suck and also use far too many exclamation points. Points? Marks? Hrm.


End file.
